Leading shares have celebrated the first US interest rate rise in nearly a decade, with the rise itself temperer by comments from the Federal Reserve suggesting any further increases will only be gradual.

Among the risers, AstraZeneca has added 41p to 4457.5p after it splashed out $4bn for 55% of privately owned biotech group Acerta Pharma. Earlier in the week, AstraZeneca had said it was looking at strategic options with Acerta, which is based in California and the Netherlands.

[The deal gives AstraZeneca] a potential best-in-class medicine that could transform treatment for patients across a range of blood cancers.

London’s FTSE-100 has bounded higher at the open, supported not only by the fact that Janet Yellen drew a line under the financial crisis – at least on the other side of the Atlantic – by hiking interest rates for the first time in almost a decade, but also accompanying this with a dovish call. Yes, more rate hikes will follow, but they will be gradual - and there’s no real expectation of the US hitting inflation targets before 2018.

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